I'm going to talk to you tonight about the Relationship as I see it between Science and
Human values Many People Think This Relationship is Somehow
Problematic
Usually Because They Think that the Universe is Parceled Into These separate Quantities on The One Hand
We have facts Which Obviously Science Can deal With?
But on the other, We have values which?
Inconveniently for Us
Cover the Most Important Questions in Human life and it's Thought science Really Can't Touch These
Questions of Right and Wrong and [Good] and Evil the core Issues of how to raise our Children What Proper Goals
We should strive for in Life?
and it's thought [that]
While science May be able to help Us get what
We value it Can Never Tell Us what we Ought to Value?
and i want to push this Intuition Around but I think This Is an Illusion I think This
Split Between facts and values IS an Illusion I
Actually Think The Connection between facts and values is Actually Quite Straightforward
Values Reduced to facts They Reduce the facts About the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures and
If you just imagine a universe where There are Only Rocks
Clearly There There are no values in This Universe There's Nothing that Can Care about Change in The Universe the moment you get Conscious
Minds They Can Experience Change then, we Can Talk about Changes that Matter?
We Can Talk About right and Wrong and Good and Evil we Can Consider?
Is to value our
Changes [and]
Experience it to the degree [That] Experience Can Change so if We care more About our Fellow primates than
We do [About] insects as indeed, we do it's because
We believe They're Lay There to A wider spectrum of Changes in Experience?
And i think, we're Right to Feel that Way
[We're] Right to have our moral Intuitions track the Possibilities of Experience and if You doubt this I just ask you to consider
Imagine A Universe [in] Which Every Conscious Creature
Suffers as much as it Possibly Can for as long as it can
Yeah i call this the the worst possible Misery for Everyone?
Okay, the worst possible Misery for Everyone
Is Bad
Now if The Word Bad Means Anything it Applies to that Situation
Now if You think that the worst possible Misery for [Everyone] might not be Bad
Or it might be Good in The end
Or There might be Something Worse [I]
Don't know what you're Talking about and
And what's more I'm Pretty Sure You don't know what you're Talking [about] either?
Now this This it Seems to me is the only Philosophical Assumption you have to grant me the worst possible Misery for Everyone Is
Bad and
Everything Else Every other Possible State of The Universe is Better and
Given That The Experience of Conscious Minds is a natural Phenomenon
Emerging out of the way the Universe the way the universe Is and Is There is Constrained by the laws [of] Nature in some Way
Then They're Going to be right and Wrong Ways to move
Along This Continuum of Possible Experience
They're Going [to] be right answers to the Question of how to avoid the worst possible Misery and
Though it will be Possible to be Wrong in your efforts to avoid the worst possible Misery and
That's all we need for [a] science of?
Morality Now Some of You May be Concerned that This Notion of the Well-Being of Conscious Creatures is not
Well-defined Enough
Think by Analogy of Physical Health, okay Physical
Health as A concept Is very Loosely defined as a truly Elastic concept Which Changes as
We Make Breakthroughs in Medicine?
How Would you Convince someone With Terminal Smallpox that he's not as, Healthy as [you] are
We don't have to Convince?
We can't Convince a majority of The American Population that Evolution is A fact and yet Yet Biology thrives?
Scientific Truth Is not Predicated on Convincing Everyone
All, We can do in that Case is Appeal to Scientific values the most basic Scientific fact
Relies on
The Value of Understanding The Universe
The Value of Respect for Evidence But What Evidence Could, We put Forward if Someone doesn't Respect, evidence What evidence Could
We put Forward Proving that They Should?
If Someone doesn't Respect Logical Consistency What Logical Argument Can
We put Forward and
So too with Parsimony and Intellectual Honesty and Mathematical Elegance and other Areas of Science This is these are values
Science Is in the values Business
and
Clearly There's A continuum of facts that
Relate Most Directly To Human [Wellbeing] about which, We can [hat] With, We Can form True or False Beliefs?
There's There's Something to be Understood About how Societies Fail but How People Fail to Collaborate and
Movement on [that] Continuum is Non-Random
And This the Requisites of Human Well-Being Can [Clearly] be Understood on Many levels we're Talking About?
The Genome We're Talking about States of the Human Brain and we're Also Talking About Economic systems and Political arrangements
but each of These levels
Granted [Their] [Their] The Details Are Complex each falls Into
One of the familiar Bins of science We're Talking about Genetics in Neurobiology and Psychology and Sociology and Economics
This Captures
That our Possible Discussion About the real Causes of
Human and Animal Well-Being and
so what I would ask you to Consider is a moral Landscape Where the [Peaks] Correspond to the heights of
Human Well-Being to speak of our case and the Valleys Correspond to the lowest depths of Misery and
One Thing to Notice Is that there May in fact Be Many Peaks on this Landscape There May be Many
Equivalents but dissimilar Ways to thrive But [There] will Be Many more Ways not to be on a Peak i mean
Clearly There There Could Still be
Right and Wrong answers About how to Move in this Space and
When You admit This
You have to admit that
Some People are Wrong About how
We should live in This World Which Is to Say Some People Care about the wrong things They Care [about] things
That Reliably Lead to Needless Human Misery and it Is not Unscientific to Say that - in fact to
Withhold That Judgment From The Point of view of science Is
Tantamount to Saying We know Nothing About Human [wellbeing] and We are, We will never Know Anything about it and
That I think Is at this moment in History A
Intellectually Dishonest Thing to do and I think it's actually a Failure of Compassion given all of the Unnecessary Misery in the World
Thank you very much
you